I've had a sneaking suspicion that the TSA is a stealth jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. It's not so much the intrusive searches and so on as the STUPIDITY of their measures (how are four small bottles of liquid different from one large bottle?). As a game I stand in line at the checkpoints daydreaming about all the ways I could sneak things through—ideas that I won't share because it appears that terrorists are generally, thank goodness, even dumber than the gatekeepers. Many critics have already dissected their policies, e.g., http://www.schneier.com/ It's just too easy.

Terrorism is a very serious problem that can get people killed. So is the TSA.

Piercing the corporate veil is for extreme abuses and rarely done — or the corporate form would be meaningless. Believe me, MUCH easier said than done. Especially when the defendant has essentially unlimited legal resources.

I'm not making an argument about what is right, just the law. Obviously corporations sometimes get away with (virtual) murder.

"Can't be bothered to take any extra effort?" Checking off the box on your license application IS registering to vote. If you are so fond of picture ID and offended by (hypothetical) fraud, what better time to register than when you're getting that very ID?

Believe me, if the person lacks ID, there are very specific requirements re identity. If the law is not being followed, that's a different problem. To accuse anyone who doesn't endorse your particular preferences for ID as favoring fraud is ridiculous. There's no perfect mix. Also, fraud is practiced by both sides; to focus on fraud only by the poor (by using the hassle method) is to put one's thumb on the scale. Besides, no one has bothered to prove the alleged widespread fraud, though there are also methods to challenge the qulaifications of voters at the polls.

The only motor voter issues I saw, BTW, related to the government dropping the ball and failing to register people. The voters I saw were qualified and eager to do their duty as citizens, and it's really upsetting to see them tripped up by red tape and gov't incompetence when so many people just stay home. That's not lazy, it's patriotic.

As a member of the party I suspect you're accusing of "enabling voter fraud," well, I might as well say the other side wants to disenfranchise legitimate voters by making it more difficult in much the same way as now-illegal literacy tests and poll taxes. I've worked at the polls for three elections now as an attorney monitoring people turned away for a variety of reasons, mostly invalid. I'll help anyone vote who has a right to regardless of their political affiliation, and I know which party that favors. The opponents of motor voter and such don't care about fraud; they care about winning.

I like macs but not platform dependence - my kid *had* to run windows software. I wouldn't want iPad dependence, either.

I think, though, that there is a case to be made for color, real wireless, and meaningful performance. Most of the added stuff for textbooks, animations and so on, don't do a whole lot, but color adds very meaningful and sometimes essential "bandwidth" (for example, an article on color blindness). Presumably you'll be able to get all that for $50 in a few years. $500 isn't even terrible. Oh, and a reasonably big screen! We have a B&W Nook, and a color one, which are fun and nice but not good enough as browsers, which i consider the relevant format not the classic trade paperback.

Theft on iPods and 'Phones (my son lost his 4S) is huge here. I haven't heard much about the computers. A mom tells me the iPads are not allowed to go home. She hasn't heard of thefts ... just the usual abuses (like posting harassing messages without realizing they're traceable to the device ... yawn). It shouldn't take too much genius to set something up to hobble or brick missing machines. I don't know. Kids carry a lot of valuables these days. You shoud hear my rants about "essential" gadgets.... :) Oh wait, you have a 5-digit UID -- oldtimer?

Yes, they get the online version, too. (Arlington VA) The high schools are starting to give out iPads, too. Some number of kids are given laptops if they don't have computer access at home (my not-poor but deprived kid got one of these because, well, we don't do Windows). This is a fairly affluent district, but the iPad used doesn't seem so $$$ compared to textbooks that already cost $80/each. The kids take better care of them than I would have expected, too. I wonder if Apple has a good bulk price for the things. Hey, most of the kids already carry cellphones worth $200-800. When I was a kid I carried a quarter for the payphone, and it was NOT that long ago. Yes, there's no reason most of the same stuff should not be available on a cheap kindle or nook or whatever. The iPad does allow the student to do some more creative work... ... but the immediate Q here is content. The e-reader (whatever the tablets are) is inevitable. I'm hoping textbooks become kind of like Linux? Except easier to install. :) I didn't refocus on college textbooks, the actual OP, but there OMG i would have saved a lot of money. On texts I often didn't use. ... if texts stay proprietary, will there be a secondary market in them? I think the publishers will at *most* offer licensing deals to institutions. Well, anyway, surely we can manage some public domain basic math texts; the fundamentals haven't and never will change.

It's not just a good idea, it's inevitable. The immediate drive, always a convincing one in politics, is money. the interesting Q is HOW to do it, but whether to start, and to do it with public money is a no-brainer. You might otherwise as well question whether public-financed education is relevant. That ship has sailed, and this is just one part of that critical project. Feynman's essay on textbook adoption is timeless: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Current textbooks are overweight, expensive, and boring. Many schools including ours have been reduced into getting students two copies because they were to heavy to take to school and back (really). Now the kids rarely even open the things.

Patience, it will happen. I wonder about the translation barrier—good translation is expensive. No, not all of us Americans expect everyone to learn English. :) But also, the book I'm working on ... I'm very sensitive about the way I put things and have to wonder how much is "lost in translation." Anyway, these arte other issues from copyright.... Where do you live? I'll make it a priority!

Yep. As I emphasized, the stuff should get read, and copyright at some point just gets in the way. I'm not sure how many authors, now dead, would have wanted the extensions to happen. *Disney* on the other hand wants to conserve its assets and didn't want to see new Mickey Mouses. That's the real fire behind these extensions, and weird sentimentality about the oeuvre of (semi-martyred) Sonny Bono. Now, most writers *don't* die with huge estates and do want to pass something of value to their heirs (it's unlikely to be a family estate! which doesn't expire). They have to strike a balance in there somewhere.

When you made the burgers, you were paid on the apot. That's not the usual model for writers. They get it a dime or dollar at a time. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Writers are part of society. What is best for society includes their welfare (food, housing) and, for their readers (all of us), keeping them productive. Finally, this is for better or worse capitalism, so you have some control over the things you make (in Lockean theory). If you want to depart from that principle, fine, but don't just inflict it on the writers because it's easy!

The rest of your arguments are just that writers like musicians can get into some other business and give their work away. Well, some can, but why force them in the name of the common good? Writing is a profession in itself with real work product taht deserves the respect given other things. (Yes, I know there's a longrunning debate over "words want to be free" or something, but I can't even grasp that one imposed 100%. I *do* love old works that are public domain, i think it's a great thing -- partly because many copyrighted works are for the moment so hard to come by.)

Preservation of the text obviously takes precedence over losing them! Then everyone loses. Google is engaged in a very important thing and I hope they'll be socially mided about it ... as opposed to (evil) greedbags.

And I intimated in the original comment that our current laws are stupid. That one's easy.

... that people get to read these works!

As a writer I understand the tension between wanting to be read and wanting to be paid. Some want only the former, some the latter; I want both, kind of like eat to live and live to eat combined. Such is my right. But I find the resistence to digitization foolish, a fixation on money and a holdover from dead tree books plus a first use doctrine many publishers and authors never liked. It's obstructionist.

As a reader, full speed ahead. I am so tired of books missing at the library or out of print. Then there's the allure of getting a book within thirty seconds. Yes, I'll pay for the privilege, can we please hurry up with an eye to both principles (get read, get paid)? And books in the public domain? Rapture. (Topic for another day: The insane extension of copyright in the Mickey Mouse / Sonny Bono Act.....)

Calvin & Hobbes: http://madshakespeare.com/2010/08/sunday-funnies-verbing-weirds-language/

The schools are running scared. School IT admin seems to lag everywhere by a generation or two or three. We're going through the latest round of IT snafus in our school system as the year begins, and it's really quite sad.

I think the blanket "protective" rules are aimed at setting up bright lines that any idiot can administer without really dealing with the human beings involved or reflecting on how porous technology makes communication to anyone determined. Seduction (in either direction) is a *social* problem not tech, and sure wasn't invented recently. These rules won't stop the problem, they're just a way of the schools burying their heads in the sand instead of dealing with the content of the problem. It's like relying on curfew to stop teenage pregnancy. Preventing abusive relationships is an education topic, not appropriate for some idiotic 50's notion that the key is to prevent the communication of "bad ideas" -- or than the medium generates the ideas!

I agree and would characterize the benefits that definitely have flowed from NASA as more of a "rebate," kind of a hidden reduction of the cost of the programs to reach stated objective. People who say the indirect acheivements make the main mission worth the money are not considering the benefits of actually investing in the goal straightaway in the first place. The manned space program, in particular, I think had been very wasteful. It is well documented that it sapped other important science projects of funding and NASA struggled to make everything a Shuttle mission. I'm not heartless: Apollo was also phenomenally expensive, but, well, I'm glad we did it! Reaching for the stars is not crazy, even if it's inefficient at generating real payoff.

Whether we would have been disciplined enough to pursue these goals if, say, space were impossible is another and no less important question (probably not! and that makes me sad). Go to the Moon or Mars gets the public interested. Probes surveying distant worlds or even space telescopes, not so much (but it helps a lot if they return gorgeous pictures of relatively little scientific value). This sounds elitist and maybe it is, but it's pragmatic, too. Many people like the space program for the same reason they like TV and sports -- entertainment, and that's not all bad.

Frankly the space program is mere pennies in comparison to other areas of the budget, one in particular. We could flood NSF with money, maybe cure cancer, and also build a (probably useless) Moon base.

Has anyone cited?: http://xkcd.com/538/ ("Security") It appleis to crime invesigations, too.

The geeky view is to ascribe much too much sophistication to criminals and decry logical failings. The brilliant "but I coudn't have been there" stories suggested just don't work in interrogation. In the real world 95% of crimes are really pretty simply and the perps don't plan things out very well. When I worked for an appeals court, very very few of the cases would have provided good material for a crime drama. Most of the time, it was a pretty simple matter of catching the guy and not that much investigative work went into it. The sawed-off shotgun was lying out in plain view on the bed and so on. It was depressing, really.